A blog about preschool, public schools, and what it's really like to be a teacher

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Apple is the sweet baby of our class. She spoke no English at the beginning of the year, and was barely comprehensible in Spanish, either. She knew no colors or numbers or shapes or letters in either language. She said nothing, but just smiled a lot. She had coping skills, and was always in the right place at the right time, gamely trying to do whatever it was we were doing.

Then she fell in love with me, and I started getting daily (even hourly) hugs from her. She started to come out of her shell, and she started speaking English, one word at a time. She got excited about writing and started writing me daily love letters, filled with her writing-like scribbles (that went left to right, top to bottom).

At writer’s workshop she understood that she was to tell stories with her drawings. At first she drew a lot of pictures of her family (her mom was always complete with boobs and nipples), and then she started to branch off. Now she draws pictures of stories about food that she has eaten with her family.

She knows the color purple. Miss Slinger taught her how to write her name a few weeks ago. She can cut with scissors. She can count to five in English. She can say sentences with three or four words.

And she is still always happy. She is our little ray of sunshine and I just love her.

I once had a boy who would draw the genitals and other gender-related attributes of his entire family — he even gave his younger sister boobs. I one time made a comment about everyone being naked. He answered, “They’re not naked. I’m just drawing what they look like under their clothes.